That's right. The staff purposely holds the number of top 500 players to about 30% of the class, lest they appear too greedy. Coach Franklin's mother must be soooo embarrassed.
The staff is going to prioritize guys regardless of ranking like Okpala and Randolph (who are just outside the top 500) and when scholarships are short like this year it is going to be hard for Illinois to rake in 8 highly ranked guys and still have room for guys they like regardless of ranking.
What's my evidence that if they had 10 more scholarships to give that we would likely see the top 500 number go up?
1. It's their 3rd going on 4th season of building relationships which is crucial.
2. We are starting to win recruitments with elite recruits, whereas we lost close ones like Jeff Thomas and Ford in the past.
3. We won several hard fought recruitments against other more successful P5 schools for guys like Coleman, Randolph, Cooper, Cumby and Okpara
The original post I responded to made it sound like if we had 10 more rides to give, we would just fill them with a Beckman level recruit. I just don't see evidence of that